Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Leas-Chathaoirleach on his election. I thank Ms Donnelly for her contribution. I read her opening statement and as often happens when a witness comes before the committee, we do a bit of CV research. Ms Donnelly's CV is very impressive indeed. I note that she was director of renewables in the Directorate-General for Energy, DG ENER, in the European Commission in Brussels. We very much value her expertise and opinion on this matter. I have a few questions. I am a rural Deputy and I hope that I am representative of the people in my county not just politically, but in terms of the outlook of people in rural Ireland. I have made a number of personal changes. At home, we have moved to organic farming since January and have taken up cycling and I now take the train to Dublin. However, there is so much more that people in rural Ireland want to do but are inhibited from doing, perhaps by a lack of recharging infrastructure and public transport being proximate to their place of work or home. There are limitations on how much people beyond city environments can do at the moment. The suggestion made some months ago by the Minister for Transport that we would bring in some punitive measures around car ownership got the hackles up in rural Ireland again. People want to do a whole lot more, but the term "just transition" can be applied in many contexts. The just transition also has to apply in terms of public transport and how some parts of the country can grasp that a lot sooner than others. If you have a Luas stop outside your front door, bingo; if you live in parts of west Clare, there might be a bus at 8 a.m. and another at 7.30 p.m. That is damn all use if someone is trying to get to work, school or whatever.

I want to ask Ms Donnelly a number of questions. Does she feel that the charging infrastructure that we have nationwide, not just in urban settings, is sufficient at this time to get us to where we want to be? Looking at best practice in other countries, Luxembourg is one that springs to mind, given that grasped the nettle and decided to make public transport free. It has not been a full success, but the decision was taken to do it as a way of enticing people to use public transport. I ask Ms Donnelly to comment on some of those measures, and also, wearing her European hat, on where there is best practice that we should be trying to replicate.